Fri, Jul 18, 2008

The Washington D.C. City Council has created so many hoops for handgun owners to jump through before they can exercise their Second Amendment rights, they may require legal counsel just to identify what the hoops are.

In advance of his organization's annual conference next week, a leading member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, headquartered at the National Press Club, is calling for a boycott of hotels in Chicago.

Dissent can indeed be patriotism, but it can just as easily be foolishness, disloyalty, or even treason. Moreover, it's hard to miss the fact that most people who use the phrase "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism," seem to have an active dislike of their country.

One would have hoped that Barack Obama's presumptive capturing of the Democratic presidential nomination would have dampened the mainstream media's obsession with race, but instead, they've figured out a way to obsess even further about it since Obama's putative victory.

Obama had barely quieted the criticism of his using the presidential seal with his name on it as a prop for his speeches before he suggested that he wanted to follow Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton to Berlin to make a speech at the Brandenburg Gate.

Two polar bears, known in these parts as ice bears, amble and yawn on an iceberg. The mother and her 2-year-old cub stand out light yellow against bright white and glacial blue -- these mascots of the global warming movement seem majestically content on an Arctic summer day.

Barack Obama's levity-free reaction to the now-famous New Yorker cartoon leaves one reluctantly wondering: Is he humor-challenged? Perchance, does he take himself too seriously for a nation of wits and wags?

The shadow of the Iraq War still hovers over the 2008 presidential race. In deed, though it's the issue that made Barack Obama (giving him his running room to Hillary Clinton's left), it may now become his chief vulnerability.

California Chief Justice Ronald George recently asserted that a 1948 court decision legalizing interracial marriage in California is analogous to the May 15 ruling granting same-sex couples the “right” to marry.

The Swiss People's Party is, with noticeable success, fighting to bring massive immigration, including Islamic immigration, under control in Switzerland before this rigidly neutral, quite independent, non-European Union country loses its uniquely Swiss character.

The decision by President Bush to revoke an old Executive Order prohibiting offshore drilling for oil and natural gas on the outer continental shelf was a good move, and helped contribute to the drop in oil prices that followed over the next two days.

Austria astounds. Salzburg is Mozart (his birthplace), a pub where Charlemagne supposedly quaffed a few, and vast happenings in squares with bands and giant screens showing the latest in the all-Europe soccer tilt.

Experts proclaimed that the United States had evolved into an “information society” of “high-tech jobs.” The traditional sources of American strength -- manufacturing, the production of food and fuel, and the assembling of cars and trucks -- were apparently passé.

Despite a report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom
that the Islamic Saudi Academy in Alexandria, Va., has continued to use
textbooks that teach hatred of everyone not of their specific brand of
faith, the U.S. State Department has yet to act to close down the school.

While Congress further takes up the debate on offshore drilling and continues to speculate on the role of speculators, there are things we can do now to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our nation’s energy infrastructure.

No matter how much spin the Democratic leadership wishes to put on their treatment of President Bush’s judicial nominees, the fact is that the American people can see that there is no justice or fairness left in the process.

After almost six weeks of a constant Obama lead, generally in the five to seven-point range, Scott Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll records two consecutive days of a tie race (July 12-13) and a one-point Obama lead on July 14.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has promised he would not make his GOP rival John McCain’s wife a political issue, but at least one of his television surrogates is trying to make her personal wealth a major campaign issue.

We're told singer Pat Boone will be stopping by the White House on Wednesday among his personal appointments while in Washington this week, including a photo session with a number of senators and congressmen before meeting with Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan.

Contrary to nearly all received wisdom in Washington, not to mention the
rhetoric of the presumptive nominees of both major parties, the scariest
moments in American politics are often its most bipartisan.

People think state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, is anti-cell phone because he wrote the law that, since July 1, has required California drivers to use hands-free cell phone devices when they are behind the wheel.

About a week ago, I reported in this column that a top defense adviser to Barack Obama was proposing that a large "residual" U.S. military force remain in Iraq under his mercurial troop-withdrawal plan.

Mexican law enforcement officials are walking into U.S. ports of entry in increasing numbers to seek political asylum, and the flow may soon become a flood as Mexico's battle with the drug cartels intensifies.

Tue, Jul 15, 2008

Barack Obama is talking a good game about on Afghanistan on the campaign trail, but he’s been neglecting his oversight duties for the country as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European Affairs.

There is no group more vilified today than the speculators, and few who are as unjustly attacked. Speculators have been taking a lot of heat from politicians and various other demagogues as the cause of the rapid rise in food and energy prices.

First they went after Saturday Night Live. Then Jon Stewart got blasted. Now left-wing blogs are attacking the New Yorker for satirizing Barack Obama and his critics on the cover of their most recent issue.

The DEA, which our great moral leader Richard Nixon created in 1973 and charged with the impossible but politically useful mission of winning the "all-out global war on the drug menace," turned 35 on July 1.

While politicians across the country continued to fight over who is liable for the current economic downturn, the Pennsylvania State Senate took matters into its own hands, seeking to provide concrete solutions for a stronger Keystone state economy.

The U.S. government has issued an updated "travel warning" surrounding the security situation in Saudi Arabia, in doing so calling attention to a new prenuptial agreement of sorts surrounding Saudi men who marry foreigners.

If the House of Representatives was the hot cup of coffee, the Senate was the saucer in which the coffee cooled. Our founders intended that the Senate would be the chamber which would house the statesman of our legislative body. But, then again, our founding fathers never met Chuck Schumer.

Two longtime friends of mine died last week. One was the renowned
cardiovascular surgeon, Dr. Michael DeBakey. I first met him as a young
reporter in Houston in the late '60s and we kept up over the years.

The most effective of all morality-based arguments for same-sex marriage, the one that persuades more people than any other argument, is the one that equates opposition to same-sex marriage with the old opposition to interracial marriage.

At a time when, in previous presidential years, neither party yet knew who its nominees would be, both have already known that vital information for months, and the problem is how to get through the nearly four months remaining before Election Day without boring the country to death.

Mon, Jul 14, 2008

Eight Republican senators and four witnesses joined Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Arlen Specter, R-Penn., Monday to recognize the issue of the slow-moving judiciary confirmation process that has left many qualified nominees without hearings.

No doubt, the written world will be filled with tributes to Tony Snow. Most will come from people who knew Tony personally as a friend or colleague, and of course, they will be most qualified to write of the man.

All across our great country and especially in rural areas, Americans can barely afford prices over $4 a gallon. Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress will not allow any legislative action to increase American energy production.

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